The Malice of Unnatural Death:

by Michael Jecks

  He was past making an attempt on her life, and yet he would not give up his pursuit. As she walked along a narrower street, then turned into a lane near the South Gate, he trailed along behind her. Soon he saw her test a gate, and enter a small yard. She crossed it, and climbed some steps to a hayloft. With the door open, she looked about her once, and then threw herself inside, pulling the doors closed behind her.

  Walking in after her, he stood a while staring at the doors. They were designed to be locked shut. There was a simple, hinged bar that rotated about a bolt in one door. The two ends of this fitted into wooden slots set into the doorframe on either side of the door. Maurice considered the doors for a long time, before quietly stepping up to them and turning the bar to lock her inside.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Exeter City

  Art had spoken to his friends at the two taverns he knew, but this one was a much worse place.

  It stood a short way down the little alleyway that ran from Combe Street southwards to the wall. The alley itself was foul, stinking of piss and shit, and filled with refuse from all the shabby buildings in the area. It was no surprise to Art that there was no chapel or church in this whole quarter of the city. No vicar would want to penetrate too deeply into this part.

  Much happened here. The wall was always a convenient boundary, but where there was a wall there were also men with ladders, and often in the morning, after a good gambling session with dice or a little contest between fighters, a fresh body would be found thrown over the wall to lie beneath near the stews or the quay. A man who asked too many questions was also likely to end up down there, as Art knew. Still, he had been promised money to find out all he could about this unknown necromancer, and he wasn’t going to turn his nose up at good money. So here he was, trying to breathe the revolting air sparingly so he didn’t catch a disease from the miasma that lurked all about.

  The tavern itself was only a single room with a low ceiling, little better than an undercroft. At the farther wall was a trestle table with four barrels of ale racked ready. Over it, splashes had struck the ceiling where the barrels had been over-lively, and there was a reek of stale ale that had seeped into the earthen floor over years. Men stood about with their horns or cups, for this place had no need of tables – it was not a relaxing alehouse for a worker to repair to after a hard day’s effort and toil. No, it was a place to stand and drink until a man could no longer stand. Then he would merely sit or fall prostrate, and others might leave him alone, or might take their sport with his body. Art had seen one man bound and scarred by the knives of three men who took a dislike to him as he lay snoring.

  He felt eyes upon him as he entered. It was unsettling, and he almost turned about and told the man that he couldn’t learn anything, but then he thought again of the money and he squared his shoulders and marched to the trestle.

  ‘Strong ale.’

  A horn was filled, and he paid before taking a gulp. ‘You know of this man been killed today? They say it may be the same man killed the king’s messenger. I know a man will pay for news of the killer.’

  ‘You think we’d be likely to help someone like that?’

  Art could hear the voice and thought he knew the man. It was a fellow who had once been a trader in the market, but had been thrown from his pitch by the pie-powder court which found he had set fire to a competitor’s wares. Arson was looked upon as one of the most serious crimes in this largely wooden city, and he was thrown out. Having lost his livelihood, he resorted to his native cunning and his dagger to earn a penny when he could, and it was said that old Hob was as willing to gut a man as a rabbit.

  ‘Look, all he wants is to try to catch the man killed his friend, that’s all.’

  ‘I think he wants us to turn traitor to our own, that’s what he wants. It’s one thing to ask us to see whether we can finger the man who killed the king’s messenger, but now he wants a fellow who’s only looking to earn a crust, eh?’

  There was a ripple of laughter about the room. Art carefully controlled his shaking hand as he took a long pull at his drink. It would not do to let people think that he was afraid of them. They could work like a pack of dogs when someone showed a trace of fear, all of them helping to pull down their quarry that they might tear him to pieces on the floor.

  He finished his horn and set it down. ‘I’ll tell him no one here knows anything, then,’ he said, and turned towards the door. The man he knew as Hob was in his way.

  Hob was heavy-set, with a massive paunch that was held in by a broad belt, and he had a rough scarlet tunic and faded cowl and hood. He had only the one eye, for the second had been lost long ago in a fight, and now he peered at Art with it as though weighing him up like a dog for a fight. ‘I don’t think I like the way you come in here asking questions for others, boy. I didn’t like it the other night, and I don’t like it now. You’ll be telling the beadles all about us next, won’t you? And then you’ll be telling stories about us in the sheriff’s court, I dare say.’

  ‘No. I only want to try to help this man. He is paying well.’

  ‘The sheriff may pay well too, to have us all in his gaol nice and safe. Don’t think I want to go there, though. Perhaps you should be made an example, eh? We haven’t had a fresh boy down here for a long time. Maybe you’d like to be bedded by us all, eh?’

  Art felt a sweat of ice break out all over his body. The idea of being raped by this motley gang was enough to make his stomach turn over in his belly, and he shivered with a sudden paroxysm of terror. He wished now he’d not taken the man’s money again. ‘No, look, let me go and I’ll just be away. I only said I’d try to learn if I could, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t think you should try to go in such a hurry,’ Hob said, and he smiled. Somehow that was more petrifying than his words.

  Hands grabbed him. Art felt them on his arms, rough, calloused hands on his wrists and elbows; a foot kicked his legs away, and he was on his back suspended by his arms. Someone was giggling, pulling at the cords of his tunic, pulling down his hosen, yanking at his underclothes, and he was struggling, crying, shouting, and then he was on the floor, dropped, thud, just like that, and gasping. He drew up his hosen quickly, while all the men had their attention elsewhere. And then he heard the voice.

  ‘Leave him, I said. Anyone who touches him is picking a fight with me. And you don’t want that.’

  Art could see Hob above him. He was peering over towards the doorway, fingering the knife that dangled by a thong from his throat, and then he hawked and spat, and at the same time his hand took hold of his knife and he started to walk.

  Hob had a lumbering walk, but for all that he covered the ground quickly when he wanted to, and now he wanted to. Art saw him move off and accelerate fast, and as he drew nearer to the door he started to bellow like a bull, and then he slashed with his hand.

  There was a spray of blood, a roaring, and Art saw Hob spin, then crash sideways into a wall. His hands were at his face, and the blood was pumping in a fine mist from a gash in his temple, and Art suddenly realised that he had been hit in his remaining eye. He was blind.

  ‘Any others want to try themselves against me?’

  Art could hear the poison in that voice. It was the sound of a man who hated himself. He could ravage and kill, but he loathed it. And now he was Art’s sole friend. Art could no more leave him than fly. He closed his eyes, expecting a knife in his side at any moment, maybe a kick in his kidneys, but nothing happened. When he opened them again, he saw that the men about him had gone. They were over near the barrels, muttering to each other as they refilled their cups, ignoring Art and his companion.

  ‘Are you all right, boy? Then get up.’

  Art obeyed him, staring at Hob with fearful fascination. Hob was hunched over on the floor, his head down, and Art could hear his snuffling as he wept. Then he looked up.

  ‘Kill him! You going to let him do this? Kill the son of a Winchester whore! He’s blinded me!’

  No
ne of the men moved. And now Art felt the man beside him start to twist his head, revolving his skull on his neck. ‘I want to know. Who saw him. Who knows anything. I want to know where this necromancer has gone.’

  ‘Kill him! You can take him, there’re seven of you! Kill him, but do it slowly! Come on, where are you all? Are you women? He’s one man!’

  Art felt his eyes filling up. It wasn’t the shabby figure on the floor there, it was the thought that if this man hadn’t been here, he would have been spread over a table by now, with all these men covering him … he would have been killed tonight, and if he hadn’t, he would have wanted to take his own life. The revulsion at what Hob had tried to do ate at his soul. He detested the old man, and he wanted to kick Hob into a pulp. He wanted to stab at him again and again … but just now all he could taste was a foul nausea in his mouth. He wanted to spew.

  ‘I want him. One of you must know where he is.’

  He stood at Art’s side on feet lying flat on the ground, slightly apart, his arms at his sides as though resting, the little blade showing from his right hand, apparently gripped lightly, not tightly as Art would have imagined, but more as an artist would hold his reed.

  ‘No one wants to help me?’

  Suddenly all was silent in the room. Hob was still, listening with a pained expression on his face. Art noticed that he could actually hear the men breathing. Not himself, and not the man at his side, but he could hear all the others, the stertorous noise of Hob, the rasping, higher-pitched sound of the alehouse-keeper’s son, the low, guttural tone of an older draw-latch in the corner … and then the man moved again.

  He reached out and took a man’s hand in his own, then pulled. The man fell off-balance, and as he fell the man took a grip under his chin and set the knife against his neck.

  Instantly the men all spun around, two with knives already in their fists.

  ‘Do nothing or he will die.’

  ‘You can’t make it to the door without us getting you. I think we ought to teach you about coming into our little house. We ought to …’

  ‘Shut up, Saul, he’s sticking it in! Jesus save me!’

  ‘If you try to rush me, he dies. If you try to throw something, he dies. If you try anything, he will die. Is that clear?’

  Art wondered whether any of the men would be concerned to see the man die, but they seemed to be unwilling to risk his life. All stood and stared as Art and the man slowly made their way backwards towards the door.

  ‘I want to hear who. I want to know where he is.’

  And at last a man spoke.

  Maurice stood in the dark and stared back at the little hay loft where he’d locked the girl. There was no sound from it, and he wondered whether she had even realised that she’d been trapped.

  She couldn’t be left in there to die. He could not do that. Better to go to her and slay her humanely than to leave her to succumb to hunger or thirst. The idea of killing her was appalling, but little worse than the idea of letting her loose and seeing her kill his sister. That too was unconscionable.

  He cursed, swearing at his miserable fortune. If it were not for the depredations of the foul Despenser clan, the fecklessness of the king and his own misfortune, he would be able to march to the sheriff or a city bailiff and tell of this chit’s crime. Then the responsibility for her punishment would be someone else’s. Although that would merely pass on the accountability. What he would prefer would be to give the child some chance of protection. Not now, though. In his outlaw state, that was impossible.

  Unless there was someone who could mediate for the girl. That set his mind racing, and soon he was setting off towards the cathedral’s close. At the entrance to the gate, he saw a rather pale-looking man in clerical clothing, and walked to him. ‘Father?’

  Busse was startled, and caught his breath as the stranger approached. Sighing, he closed his eyes a moment. This was one of the worst days of his life, he thought. The discovery of that body in Langatre’s undercroft, the realisation that he was a suspect when the folk from the street crowded round him … it was a day he would prefer to forget, and that as soon as possible.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered testily. ‘I am on my way to see my lord bishop. Please be quick.’

  ‘I saw a woman enter a hayloft down this lane, Father,’ Maurice said. ‘It’s just down here, on the right as you go towards the South Gate. Above a stable with a broken door in a cobbled yard. The latch fell and locked her inside.’

  ‘What of it?’ Busse said, but even as he turned back from staring down the lane in the direction indicated, Maurice was gone. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded pitifully. ‘What can I do about this?’

  He was in a quandary. There was no time now … it was growing dark, and his stomach was already querulously rumbling.

  The aspirant abbot set his jaw, his mouth pursed, and hurried down the lane to the abbot’s gatehouse.

  ‘Keeper, I have just been told that a girl has been locked in a hayloft,’ he declared as he saw the porter at the gate. He quickly explained what he had heard, before continuing on his way to the bishop.

  The porter looked about him at the darkening lanes. ‘Can’t do anything now,’ he said, and slammed the gate shut.

  There would be time tomorrow. He’d tell the nearest watchman as soon as he reopened the gate in the morning.

  Exeter Castle

  Baldwin and Simon waited while the sheriff took his leave of his wife, and then led the way outside, the coroner taking up the rear, reluctant as ever to leave a still-filled table.

  ‘Now, Sir Matthew, I have some questions for you on this other matter,’ Baldwin said when they were out of earshot of any idle ears.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘I am drawn to conclude that you know more than you have said about the arrival in the city of a necromancer.’

  ‘Me?’ Matthew was stunned. ‘All I know is that I had a writ asking me to help the king in his investigations, and I did what I could to aid him.’

  ‘You did? What did you do, exactly? You arrested a man who could not conceivably have had anything to do with affairs in Coventry, and had him held in your gaol for a little over a night. I do not see how that would have materially assisted the king.’

  ‘He was a necromancer. He might have known something.’

  Baldwin eyed him with contempt. ‘You expect me to believe that? You seriously believe that Despenser and the king himself would be impressed with your bringing forward a benighted soul all the way from Exeter, when it was clear enough that he knew nothing about the affair? That he could have known nothing?’

  ‘If there was time for the messenger to arrive here from Coventry, after he had already travelled all the way to the king, received his writ, and made his way all the way here, there was plenty of time for a foul necromancer to have made his way here from Coventry. The man Langatre could have had information that was useful. It was right to arrest him.’

  Baldwin was still. ‘I had not considered that – are you saying that the very same messenger came here after Coventry?’

  ‘Yes. The man James was the same man who took news of the attempt on the king’s life to the king.’

  ‘What is it, Baldwin?’ Simon asked. ‘You can see something, can’t you?’

  ‘Only this: if the man who brought the message here was the same one as was in Coventry, then we have a reason why someone might have killed him. He could have seen the necromancer and any confederates in Coventry, couldn’t he? If one of the assassins had made his way here, thinking himself secure from any agents of the king, how would he feel were he to suddenly be confronted by one of the men who had seen him there?’

  ‘And the carver of antlers?’

  ‘Perhaps this fellow from Coventry thought he took too much interest in him?’

  ‘All this supposes that there is someone here from Coventry,’ Coroner Richard said. ‘We have no proof of that as yet.’

  ‘No, we have no proof, but we have had a man break into
Langatre’s house and rob him of some tools used by necromancers. Sheriff, I would be grateful if you could have your clerk give instructions to all the gate porters to try to recall whether they have admitted a man from Coventry or somewhere nearby in the last month.’

  ‘Of course.’

  It was Simon who shook his head doubtfully. ‘That is another reason why this Mucheton could have been killed.’

  ‘Why?’ the sheriff demanded.

  ‘Because if there is someone manufacturing dolls in the city with the intention of stabbing them to kill people, what would he use to stab them? A white bone pin might appeal to some men.’

  ‘Maleficium!’ the coroner breathed.

  ‘It would explain the black cat seen at the first murder, and the strange disappearing man at the second,’ Simon said.

  ‘A bite of strong cheese or too much strong ale would explain them just as well,’ Baldwin said scathingly.

  ‘So you may believe,’ Sir Matthew said, ‘but I have heard that Sir Richard de Sowe was killed by this necromancer in Coventry. A doll was made, and a little lead pin thrust into his head killed him. These necromancers are very mighty, Sir Baldwin. And I have heard that they can do all they wish with the merest glance at a man. The demons they carry about with them can do their will …’

  ‘You think so?’ Baldwin asked sarcastically. ‘And I suppose they carry these demons in rings on their fingers?’

  ‘That is what they say.’

  ‘I wonder, do they have especially strong fingers?’

  Sir Matthew was puzzled. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know how heavy a falcon is. If you were to walk about all day with a falcon on your wrist, would not your arm grow tired? Yet a demon is apparently so light that it can rest on a finger, and not make the magician exhausted. Are they so small that they can weigh so little? And if so small, do they truly have any power? Ptchah! This is nonsense, all of it. I believe in corporeal bodies causing harm. The antler-carver Mucheton was murdered by a man with a knife; the messenger was murdered by a man with a knife and another, perhaps, with a cord; the servant of Langatre was killed by a cord; Walter of Hanlegh was murdered with a knife. All weapons which are used by men, not by mystical and magical creatures. We should look for human agents here, not ghosts and demons!’